


Thanks Fur Everything

by calmena



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Fluff, M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 03:05:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17799956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calmena/pseuds/calmena
Summary: In which Bucky begins to bond with a dog in Stark's lab, and the dog turns out to be... something else.A fill for the Tony Stark Bingo 2019.S1 - Werecreatures





	Thanks Fur Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Happy International Fanworks Day, have some fluff!
> 
> A big thank you to [mistrstank](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamingdarkly/pseuds/mistrstank) and Gavilan, who did the impossible and made this into an actual readable thing through the magic of editing. Any leftover mistakes are all mine!

A dog was napping on the couch, and Bucky was confused.

He'd thought -- well, he'd asked if Stark had time for him, hadn't he? When JARVIS had told him yes and brought him to the lab, he'd expected to find Stark there working on something, or maybe bickering with the bots. He'd been looking forward to it, really.

So finding the lab empty except for the large black dog that was now looking back at him through barely open eyes was certainly unexpected.

Thing was, it didn't look particularly threatening, what with the blanket haphazardly thrown over it. DUM-E -- he'd learned that name the first time he'd come down to the lab, fully prepared to find the place terrifying only to immediately fall in love with the technology instead -- was plucking at the corners in an effort to straighten it out.

The endeavor really resulted in the blanket covering less and less of the dog and increasingly more of the couch, but the dog didn't seem to mind, if the lazy back and forth of the tail under the blanket was any indication.

Bucky let his eyes trail over the room once more, but Stark did not pop out from behind one piece of machinery or another. It was only him and the dog.

Shrugging, Bucky made his way over and crouched down, just out of reach in case the dog did end up deciding it didn't want any stupid humans encroaching on its space.

"Who are you, then?" He asked softly, holding out his hand when his mere presence didn't cause any reaction other than a slow blink. "You're a handsome one, aren't you?"

The dog huffed and -- Bucky didn't have any other word for it -- _preened_.

Moving slowly, Bucky lifted his hand until it hovered over the dog's head, but the dog didn't seem to mind even when he started stroking the fur lightly, prepared to snatch his hand back if it seemed like his touch wasn't welcome after all.

The fur was just a bit bristly under his fingertips, and Bucky didn't even notice that he'd relaxed until he realized was sitting on the floor next to the couch, still carding his fingers through the dog's fur all the while.

"Are you Stark's, then?" He muttered softly, more to himself than anything else.

The dog's ears perked up just the tiniest bit at the name, then went down to their previous, relaxed position.

Bucky took that as a yes.

For a moment, he wondered why he'd never seen the dog around before. Of course, maybe Stark didn't usually take him down to the lab with him. Perhaps he usually stayed in the penthouse, where Stark lived?

But then why was he here now?

The dog huffed and headbutted his hand where it had subconsciously stilled and Bucky shook himself out of his thoughts. Well, the dog was here, and soft, and friendly. As long as nobody told him to leave -- and JARVIS had been quiet so far, so he assumed being down here was fine -- he would stay and continue.

* * *

He blinked awake slowly, feeling stiff in a way he hadn't in a very long time. He was also not in bed but curled up next to a couch.

Tensing up, he waited for -- something. He almost jumped out of his skin when something started slipping down his back, jostled free by the tiny movement. A second later he wanted to shake his head at himself when he realized that it was nothing more than a blanket that someone had put over him. The same blanket, in fact, that had covered the dog the day before.

Bucky smiled and left it folded on the couch before he left the lab.

The dog was gone.

* * *

The dog wasn't always in the lab when Bucky came down. He'd stopped asking JARVIS whether Stark was there and had started asking whether he was allowed to go down, at some point, because the number of times he'd been told yes only to find that Stark was mysteriously absent in favor of the dog, after all, had been ridiculous.

At some point he'd asked JARVIS -- jokingly -- whether the dog was also called Stark, then, only to receive what he was pretty sure amounted to the AI version of a snort in response.

He'd left it at that, deciding that it really probably wasn't his business.

Even if he did enjoy the cuddling sessions with the dog a lot.

* * *

He started calling the dog "Stark" in his head, which was probably strange since Stark was an actual person whose building Bucky lived in, but he figured they were all weird so it was okay.

The one time it had slipped out when he'd been talking to the dog he'd gotten a huff that sounded oddly like a laugh in response, but that had been the extent of it, so the name sort of… stuck.

* * *

It was the stupidest thing. They ended up locked in what was some half-baked, small-time villain's hideout with crumbling walls that just shouted instability but somehow still managed to interrupt the signal of their comms.

Bucky had offered to simply rip the door out or punch through it to get them out, and Stark had sent him a scathing look.

"Do you want to collapse the whole building on us?" He'd asked and gone on to explain just which parts of the walls would break down under sudden changes of pressure until Bucky almost begged him to stop because all the information did was make him wary of even just breathing.

It left them stuck in a place that really had no hope of holding them -- or wouldn't have if they didn't have to worry about being squished by the foundations.

"Well, this sucks," Stark muttered under his breath, walking out of the room to probably inspect the bathroom. So far, all the windows had been bricked up and they hadn't wanted to risk Bucky punching through them because, well, squishy human beings.

"There's a window in here!" Stark shouted a few seconds later and Bucky nodded to himself because he'd caught sight of it when they'd entered the room, only a moment before the door behind them had slammed shut. Dust had rained down from the ceiling at the same time.

"Yeah, too small though. Not even you are gonna fit through that, sorry."

There were some indignant sounds, something that sounded like, "yeah, just watch me", rustling… and then nothing.

Bucky frowned but didn't think anything of it, until a few minutes passed and there was still nothing.

When he went in search of Stark, all he found was a pile of clothing and no sign of the man.

Bucky frowned, looking at the window again. It was still small, too small for an adult male to fit through, even one who was quite a bit smaller in stature than Bucky.

But Stark's clothes were still on the floor, and there was no sign of the man.

"What the hell," Bucky muttered, staring in disbelief as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to do with this.

He was forced to put the mystery aside only a moment later when there were the sounds of scratching and scrabbling starting up from the front door.

Bucky sighed and wished he'd just stayed home, even as he crept around the corner, gun at the ready just in case… when there was the sound of a key turning in the lock.

Then he heard a bark.

"What the hell," he repeated, and didn't put the gun away as he went to open the door, anyway. And found himself on the opposite side of a baleful look from what he was pretty sure was Stark's dog.

For a second or two, Bucky just stared. Then he decided to throw sanity out of the window, because the day had apparently decided to do just that, and followed the dog anyway.

"Does Stark take you to battle with him?" he muttered to himself. "Do you have a flying armor, too? Will you lead me to where Stark is? Because he's probably naked, and I have questions."

The dog gave a huff that sounded disturbingly like a laugh but didn't reply.

Obviously.

* * *

"Bucky!" Steve shouted, way too relieved for what had, in the end, been a pretty underwhelming experience. "You're okay!"

The dog jumped aside to let Steve hug him outside, and Bucky thumped Steve on the back a few times when it seemed like he wouldn't let go.

"You got any idea where that one's owner is?" He finally asked, and Steve let go of him to turn around to look at where Bucky was gesturing.

He snorted when he saw the dog.

"What the hell are you talking about?" He asked, amused, raising his eyebrow at Bucky. "What owner?"

"Well, Stark vanished into thin air while we were--" He grimaced. "Captured. This one found me before I could look for him, but--"

And then there was Stark, naked as the day he was born, right up until Steve threw a blanket at him.

Nobody else seemed particularly surprised at that development, and Bucky almost choked on his indignation.

"None of you thought that was something you should mention to me?" He asked, voice a full octave higher than usual as he worked to reconcile the dog he'd been petting in the lab with the man standing in front of him. "I've been petting his belly!"

"Yes," Stark said, gravely, "You're good at it. Hit all of my favorite spots."

Bucky blushed to the roots of his hair and scowled.

* * *

The thing was, now that Bucky knew that it was Stark-- the human Stark-- _Tony_ , he could see it.

It was the way he nudged back into touches, just the slightest bit, when a friend patted him on the shoulder, hugged him, even that one time Ms. Potts fussed with his hair before a press conference.

How he sometimes started to reach out to Bucky before catching himself, the eyes he'd gotten so used to seeing on a dog looking at him as if it _hurt_.

And when Tony wasn't looking--

How Bucky wanted to card his fingers through Tony's hair and find out if it was as soft as it looked, or kept some of the coarseness of dog fur. How he wanted to curl up next to Tony on the couch during one of the team's movie nights. How he kept having to catch himself when he was thinking about going down to the lab to see Stark, because Stark was Tony, and Tony was a human, even if he could apparently shift into the form of a dog.

He sighed and turned over until his face was pressed into his pillow.

Why was the future so weird?

* * *

It took Bucky a few weeks to get used to the idea. During that time, Doctor Banner explained to him how the whole Tony-can-shift-into-a-dog thing had come about, and then Steve had explained it again, but in words Bucky actually understood.

(Apparently, it all boiled down to 'magic is an asshole, but it could've been worse'.)

* * *

"This is still weird," Bucky muttered, absently petting the head lying in his lap.

Tony opened an eye and glared at him.

"What? You want to tell me that you don't think this is weird?"

Tony shifted back and Bucky yelped at suddenly having a naked human very close to his junk.

When Tony just laughed, Bucky pushed him off the couch in retribution. And really, Tony's own startled yelp was music to his ears.

DUM-E put a blanket over Tony while he was still complaining from the floor.

* * *

"What's that, then?"

"Dog biscuits," Bucky said, straight-faced. He was proud of that, too. He'd practiced the line and variations of it in front of a mirror until he'd been able to say it without breaking out in laughter.

Tony glared at him, so Bucky decided to take pity and pulled his other hand from his back.

Tony stopped glaring.

"What's _that,_ then?" He asked again, but so, so different from before, and this time Bucky couldn't actually help the nervous wetting of his lip.

"Roses," he said, determined because he'd planned this, and hell if he was going to wimp out, even if it was a bit cheesy. "I wasn't sure which form you'd be in, so I figured I'd bring something for either case."

Tony stared at him, but there was a smile hovering at the corners of his lips, and the sight of it gave Bucky the courage to continue.

"Would you like to go out to dinner with me?"

The twitching of the lips became a full-blown smile, and Bucky felt breathless at the sight of it.

"I'd love to - as long as it's not dog biscuits, that is."


End file.
